Later this month, live pigs are scheduled to be used and then killed in a trauma training course at North Dakota State University in Fargo. We need your help to end this unnecessary and cruel use of animals, which takes place in partnership with MeritCare Hospital.

Across the nation, more than 90 percent of Advanced Trauma Life Support courses are taught using only human-based simulators. But in Fargo, this course involves cutting open live, anesthetized pigs and practicing emergency medical procedures. After the training session, the animals are killed.

Please call, e-mail, or write a letter to North Dakota State University (NDSU) president Joseph A. Chapman, Ph.D., and politely ask him to end animal use in the institution’s Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) course. Being polite is the most effective way to help these animals. Send an automatic e-mail.

Last month, PCRM obtained records through the North Dakota Open Records Law that proved that NDSU was partnering with MeritCare Hospital in Fargo to use live animals in its ATLS program.

On April 15, 2009, PCRM filed a complaint with NDSU’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. The complaint cites outdated and misleading information provided to the committee by the ATLS program director. Read the article on our complaint in Fargo’s The Forum newspaper.

In addition, the complaint cites an ongoing survey by PCRM, which has so far received responses from 202 ATLS programs in the United States and Canada. The survey has found that 188 of those programs (more than 90 percent) exclusively use nonanimal models for instruction. The vast majority of those 188 programs exclusively use the TraumaMan System.